Mat Honan got hacked, and lost all the data on his MacBook, iPad, and iPhone. How? Somebody broke into his iCloud account. Brute force attack? Simple password? No, not really - the hacker called Apple tech support, and convinced the person on the phone he was really Mat Honan. Apple then reset the iCloud password. The dangers of a monoculture, kids. Even Steve Wozniak has doubts about everything going into the cloud.

He lost all his data because all his machines were Apple and his cloud provider was Apple. He relied on a monoculture, and everything was lost. You seem to think I'm blaming Apple (your favourite company), which I'm not - I'm blaming the guy for being stupid enough to have only Apple devices and Apple software. Had he had a Windows laptop, an Android phone, and an iPad, this would have NEVER happened.

Thom, he lost his data because he installed "remotely wipe" solutions on his devices that were linked to one of his mail accounts.

i've just shown you that you can install similar applications on other OSes and devices and they all behave the same and they all are linked to your webmail.

Apple's fault here is the original reset of his password. That's dumb. i'm not sure if they could have avoided it, considering the kind of safety features for this kind of systems (i can't stop bitching about "what' my pet name" questions). But apart from that Apple is as guilty as any other provider of the same services. which is none. they did what they were asked by what they believed was the user.

Remotely wipe solutions are solutions for protecting the data in your physical computer from getting in the hands of thieves. they are not designed to prevent you loosing access to your webmail accounts.

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and just for the record, Mac OS X is currently my favourite system. Apple is just the company that does it. I find less fault in their computer systems than with other vendors, but i sure hell don't trust them or "like" them nor are they my "favourite company". they provide me with what i want. for now. the way things are going not sure if that will last for a long time.

He lost all his data because all his machines were Apple and his cloud provider was Apple. He relied on a monoculture, and everything was lost.

No, factually incorrect. He lost all of his data because he linked his devices to the same Apple ID and then allowed remote Wipe. You can associate your iDevices with multiple iCloud accounts (i.e. one per device, and in fact this happens by default.) I did this on my iphone/ipad initially, but to be honest, I ended up buying extra space, so I linked them both to the same account. But my iCloud is linked to my Gmail account and that has 2 step authentication turned on. Your icloud also doesn't have to have anything to do with your iTunes Apple ID, not your developer Apple ID. The problem is more that people like to use the same details and passwords everywhere.

I'm blaming the guy for being stupid enough to have only Apple devices and Apple software. Had he had a Windows laptop, an Android phone, and an iPad, this would have NEVER happened.

Again, bull. This could easily have happened with every other device, if the person configuring services used the same primary email address. As already mentioned, not even Apple forces you to do that.

He lost all his data because all his machines were Apple and his cloud provider was Apple. He relied on a monoculture, and everything was lost. You seem to think I'm blaming Apple (your favourite company), which I'm not - I'm blaming the guy for being stupid enough to have only Apple devices and Apple software. Had he had a Windows laptop, an Android phone, and an iPad, this would have NEVER happened.

That's funny coming from someone so excited about Windows Phone. According to your anti-monoculture ideology that should be a strict impossibility. I guess if you want a windows phone you can always switch to a Mac laptop.

Realistically the chance of this kind of thing is one in several hundred million. Compromising interoperability every single day just to avoid such a remote possibility is ridiculously paranoid. I use just as many google services as apple services, so it has nothing to do with any particular company.